Desktop Dungeons

I have been on the fence with this game for some time and am curious if it is worth getting, in the description it says "Desktop Dungeons is a quick-play roguelike puzzle game that gives you roughly 10 minutes of dungeon-crawling action per serving." I have viewed a ton of "Lets Play" vids on youtube and games seem much longer than this, which is cool dont get me wrong, so what does it mean by 10min of action per serving exactly? I that how long a dungeon will last? Also it says it is a puzzler game as well, but watching all the different vids I have seen on youtube, what is the puzzle aspect of the game, as the vids dont show much in the way of puzzle solving. Any feedback anybody can give me is greatly appreciated, thanks.

The 10 minutes is refering to the time it needs to solve a dungeon. However, usually it takes more than that, especially when you are not that experienced with the game/class/dungeon yet, though if you are getting good at it, you can solve most dungeons in 10 minutes, but there is no need to do so, you have as much time as you want.The puzzle part is about the gameplay itself. You always have to think how you can beat a specific enemy. For example, first two hits, then regenerate exactly for one square to get another hit in, then using a glyph for the kill. This kind of thing you should think about and not just execute, cause when you are some hp short you have invested a lot of resources without any benefit. I guess you should have seen this kind of thing in those lets plays already (if they are more experienced and don't use the balanced dagger.....) However, there are also real puzzles available, these are set in a given environment with only 1-2 possible solutions.

Well, LPs also tend to involve talking, which slows you down signifcantly.Unless I'm going for a particular medal, I can usually pick a setup I like and blitz through most of the hard dungeons in a matter of minutes.Sure, you can play the game slowly and try to do as well as possible, but I'm currently on a "making money quickly" thing - saving up for a locker slot, so I just go where the flaming dungeon goes (triple cash from boss kill) and run orc warlord or something. Just get to a mid-ish level, expend all resources, splatter the boss, and bank the cash.

To elaborate a bit more on the idea of Desktop Dungeons as a "puzzle" game: play the game enough, and every dungeon starts feeling like its own puzzle to solve. This is actually not entirely unlike most Roguelikes: these games give you a new assortment of situations and tools to deal with every new attempt, and you have to figure out how to beat ("solve") it.

Desktop Dungeons is particular in that respect because the dungeon you get is largely "fixed": monsters don't move, and random elements *within* the dungeon once it's been generated are quite uncommon (mostly stuff like dodge chance and blinking monsters). It's also quite transparent about most of the stats and the maths that are going on, so you have a lot of control over the way all of your resources are spent on your goal of taking down the boss(es). For a lot of people, the RPG/Exploration is simply the theme dressing up the game's puzzle mechanics, and while I do feel that this interpretation is a bit reductive, it's not wrong in that this game really is its own *thing*.

Also, for the 10-minute thing: your average "normal" dungeon can be expected to take around that much time, and a lot of players are likely to stay mostly within those dungeons as a comfort zone. Harder dungeons can take longer, and the hardest ones are even longer on top of taking a lot more thought to beat. And of course, as you gain experience with the game, your play time per dungeon goes down.

I personally recommend the game to pretty much everyone who enjoys clever, puzzle-y rpgs or procedural generation games in general. It's easilly one of my favourite games of all time, and I say that with no hyperbole :)

Thanks all for the info, i really appreciate it, i was just confused on the 10min serving part, because i play the "Infinate Space" games and all those games in the series are just that, approx 10min per serving games, depending on how you play the game and i was just curious if this game was similar in that respect, except where Infinate Space is sci-fi, i though Desktop Dungeons would be well sort of the fantasy version of it lol. Once again, thanks for all the info, gives me a lot too think about. :)

The Infinite Space games (SAIS in particular) were definitely an inspiration for Desktop Dungeons and the kind of play length we wanted to aim for. That and Oasis. Both are among my personal favorite games of all time :)